Peter Carnley has made some comments concerning the Eucharist in his role as Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, specifically concerning the issue of lay presidency of the Eucharist. In a paper prepared for the Ordained Ministry Working Group of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, published in 1999, and entitled Korah and His Cohort: Some Biblical Problems with Lay Presidency at the Eucharist, Carnley rejects the idea of lay presidency of the Eucharist on the basis of unauthorised taking of sacrificial function. The implication of what he says is that for the president of the Eucharist there is a sacrificial function to be exercised and this, Carnley argues on the basis of scriptural precedent, can only be done by an ordained person. It is precisely this view that puts him at odds with more Evangelical Anglicans, such as those within the Dioceses of Sydney and Armidale, who seek to promote lay presidency of the Eucharist and at the same time to reject the idea of eucharistic sacrifice and the offering of any kind of sacrifice by a priest.

Carnley argues that the distinctive role of the priest is leadership in the Christian community and that this leadership has traditionally been liturgically focused in the leadership of the congregation gathered for worship. The priest, according to the Ordinal has ultimate responsibility for the administration of the sacraments (Carnley, 1999: 2). If this liturgically focused leadership is detached from the overall role of leadership, then “this means that the normal nexus between the presiding oversight of the priest in relation to the flock in general terms, and the specific and immediate priestly oversight concretely expressed in liturgical leadership or presidency over Word and Sacrament, is broken” (Carnley, 1999: 3). Carnley also argues that what is done in the Church should be done “dencently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14: 40) and that this has been interpreted in the Church as the bishop having authoritative order, which may to some extent be shared with the college of presbyters, but the episcopal identity itself is not delegated. The priest in turn has specific functions assigned to him or her at ordination and these include the role of presiding over the Word and Sacrament in the Eucharist. It is on this basis that Carnley argues that: “the casual and occasional performance of uniquely priestly tasks by lay people may be held to be inimical to the life of the church” (Carnley, 1999: 4). If the priest is to share in the good ordering of the Church with the Bishop, then “the good ordering of the celebration of the eucharist is an essential ingredient” and further the “dangers of disorder implicit in allowing just anyone to preside over gatherings of the people of God for the eucharistic offering may be held to be entirely foreign to Anglicanism for this pragmatic reason, given the fundamental theological imperative of achieving the good order, peace and harmony of divine life” (Carnley, 1999: 5). The important point to note here, for the purposes of these case studies, is that Carnley refers to ‘the eucharistic offering’, suggesting that there is an offering in the Eucharist, although he does not define what he means by this at this point.

While pragmatic reasons have importance in allocating the role of presiding at the Eucharist to the priest alone, Carnley also argues that there must be more essential functions to priesthood than the pragmatic need for order. Carnley admits that there is no use of the word ‘priest’ in the New Testament while the words ‘deacon’ (servant) and ‘bishop’ (overseer) are clearly found (e.g. Philippians 1: 1). The word ‘priest’ emerges later, perhaps about the end of the second century CE and from this time onwards becomes influential in the Church (Carnley, 1999: 10-11). The term ‘priest’ is also favoured by the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and it is the priest who is instructed to take, break and give the bread and wine in the rubrics found with the Prayer of Consecration. Despite the odium associated with the Medieval priesthood, the Anglican Reformers specifically choose to continue the use of the word ‘priest’. In Australia this has constitutional importance because the 1662 BCP is the standard of doctrine and worship in the Anglican Church of Australia (see Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia, 1962, Online) and so the use of the word ‘priest’ has not only theological significance but constitutional significance as well. The word ‘priest’, suggests Carnley, “is necessarily associated with a set of quite specific functions” (Carnley, 1999: 11) grounded not only within the 1662 BCP, but also within Scripture, particularly “the original context and cultus of the Old Testament” and the way in which these were renovated and used by the early Christians (Carnley, 1999: 11). The Greek word hierus in the New Testament is used to denote the great high priest, that is Christ, in the Letter to the Hebrews and it is also used in relation to the whole people of God (1 Peter 2: 5). Carnley therefore concludes that “the meaning of the term ‘priest’ in The Book of Common Prayer to denote the ordained minister of Word and Sacrament in the Church, cannot be divorced from its family resemblance with the scriptural use of the same concept both in the Old Testament and its use in relation to Christ the eternal High Priest as well as in relation to the Church at large as the ‘priestly people of God’” (Carnley, 1999: 11). On this basis Carnley further concludes that the role of presiding at the Eucharist cannot be delegated to lay people, but only to the priest, since such delegation “detaches an understanding of priestly ministry from its biblical roots in the cult of offering of sacrificial worship” (Carnley, 1999: 12). The logic of this argument becomes plainer when Carnley goes on to discuss the specific role of the priest in celebrating the Eucharist, together with the people of God. Here he says concerning the use of the word ‘priest’ that:

“The role of the priest when he leads his or her people as together at the Eucharist they insert themselves into the eternal prayerful pleading of the ‘once for all’ sacrifice of Christ himself, through the anamnetic commemoration of the sacrifice offered by Christ and eternally pleaded at the right hand of the Father, is normative in any understanding of the meaning of the term.” (Carnley, 1999: 12).

This comment implies that the philosophical assumptions of moderate realism underlie what Carnley is saying in relation to what happens in the Eucharist. The ‘pleading’ is not merely a past and completed event, but is contextualised in the Eucharist, where priest and people together ‘plead’ the sacrifice of Christ. Further reference to anamnesis means that the offering of Christ is known in the present context of the Eucharist by its effects, that is, Christ’s sacrifice is instantiated in the Eucharist. This is clearly moderate realism where signs in the present are linked with the eternal signified sacrifice of Christ. Not only were these moderate realist association found in the writings of the early Church Fathers (e.g. 1 Clement, xl: 2, edn. Kirsopp Lake, 1985: 77 and Didache, xiv: 1-3, edn. Kirsopp Lake, 1985: 331), but they also owe much to the Old Testament models where priests were those who offered sacrifice to God (e.g. Deuteronomy 33: 8-10). Despite the contextual differences between the Old Testament and New Testament references to the sacrificial work of the priest, Carnley argues that they all make “an essential association of the term priesthood with the concept of sacrifice, and the exclusive nature of the functions uniquely associated with the inherited term ‘priesthood’” (Carnley, 1999: 13). This same use and function, Carnley argues, continues in the 1662 BCP in relation to the priest in the Christian congregation. He clearly means that more than a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for a past and completed event (as nominalist assumptions would dictate) occurs in the Eucharist and says in relation to the word ‘priest’:

“For the role of leading and presiding over the offering of the ‘sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving’ and leading the anamnetic commemoration of the once and for all sacrifice of Christ, cannot be disassociated from the term. Indeed, a necessary association of the term ‘priest’ with the leadership of the sacrificial offering of worship is an indication that this is an analytic judgment [meaning in a Kantian sense one that derives from the meaning of the term itself rather than empirical observation] that is contained in the very concept of priest, rather than an ampliative synthetic judgment [one based on empirical observation] whose truth or otherwise might be established by observation.” (Carnley, 1999: 13).

This means for Carnley, that “it belongs to our conception of a priest, not our experience of priests, that priests play a key role in the offering of sacrifice” (Carnley, 1999: 14). By ‘offering of sacrifice’ Carnley does not mean immoderate realism, but moderate realism. He says:

“While firmly rejecting any suggestion that priests offer propitiatory sacrifices for the manipulation of God, or that they offer Christ anew in the eucharist, Anglicans would at least contend today that priests lead the people of God ‘in the offering of the spiritual sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving’ for all the benefits won once and for all by Christ upon the Cross, whose sacrifice is vitally commemorated in each eucharistic celebration” (Carnley, 1999: 14).

The sacrifice is instantiated in each eucharistic celebration and this is not merely one of thanks and praise, but one which is commemorated in a real (vitally) way. This is the language of moderate realism since the signified sacrifice of Christ is linked closely with the sign of the Eucharist as a commemoration of that sacrifice, in a way that is clearly more than merely bringing this past and completed event to mind.

Carnley then turns his attention to a consideration of some of the biblical evidence related to the unauthorised taking of sacrificial functions. He cites the Old Testament precedent of choosing the priests from the sub-set of the Hebrew people known as the house of Aaron. He also cites the biblical prohibition against those who take holy things by force. In Numbers, chapter 16 there is the story of Korah and his cohort who took holy things by force and who subsequently suffered the death penalty. The reason for Korah’s action against Moses and Aaron was the egalitarian belief claimed that “all the congregation are holy, everyone of them” (Number 16: 3). This a claim against the exclusive priesthood of the house of Aaron, which Moses responds to by saying “you seek the priesthood as well” (Numbers 16: 10). Carnley also cites the case of Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26: 18, who sought to make an unauthorised offering at the altar of incense, and for which he was punished. In the New Testament St Paul in 1 Corinthians 11: 30 speaks of the misuse of sacred things at the celebration of the Eucharist in Corinth. All this allows Carnley to put the case, on the basis of this biblical evidence, for associating the Eucharist with a sacrificial function of the priesthood, where a group of people is set apart to perform specifically sacrificial actions. The Eucharist is, according to this line of thought, more than a fellowship meal because “it involves the anamnetic commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ offered once and for all” (Carnley, 1999: 16). It is because of this association of the Eucharist with sacrificial concepts that Paul warns against the improper use of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians. Carnley therefore comes to his main conclusion:

“This biblical evidence suggests to us that the unauthorised taking of the holy things of offering of the sacrificial worship of the divine, by those who presume to handle sacred things with mundane familiarity, failing to discern their true and holy significance … [leads to a] … failure to place an understanding of the role of the priest at the eucharist in the context of the sacrificial theory of the biblical world.” (Carnley, 1999: 17).

This failure, Carnley asserts, reflects more a contemporary commercial world view, where authority is delegated to others, but is clearly not a biblical view. Clearly the type of sacrificial worship and priestly function he is referring to here is based on the sacramental principle and the assumptions of moderate realism.

Carnley also comments on the Eucharist in his Presidential Address delivered at the Twelfth General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, in Brisbane on Saturday 21 July, 2001. Here he speaks of the Eucharist in the context of Trinitarian relationality, saying that:

“In the Lord’s Supper the people of God share in the communion of the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor. 10: 16-17). This, indeed, is where the reality of the communion of God, the Holy Trinity, is most intimately experienced and most clearly seen on this side of the eschaton; it is indeed, the Holy Communion, God’s holy people made holy by sharing the communion of his own holy life.” (Carnley, 2001: 10).

He goes on to say, quoting Cranmer: “It is in the eucharistic communion that we ‘become partakers of the divine nature’ (Cranmer, Answer, edn. Cox, 1844: 165), as Archbishop Cranmer, quoting 2 Peter 1: 4, so forcefully said in his answer to Gardiner” (Carnley, 2001: 10). The importance of this for Carnley is that:

“the communion of the Church is not just a mundane reflection of a Platonic kind of the heavenly communion of God the Trinity; that forces too much of a rift between the communion of the Trinity as experienced by us in the economy of salvation and the essential life of God as God is in God’s self. Rather, the communion we share, even though in varying degrees, in hints and glimpses, and despite our ability both wilfully and unwittingly to obscure it by the sinful spectacle we make of ourselves, is nevertheless the communion of the Trinity. The mutual exchange of love by self-gift that makes God one, is the same love that, incarnate in the Son, makes us one with God, and in the fellowship of the Spirit the same love makes us one with another. This means that the communion we share is not just a humanly created fellowship amongst like-minded people. We do not create it ourselves. Rather, as 1 John 1: 2-3 says, ‘Our communion’ is not just with one another; it is ‘with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ’ through the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Carnley, 2001: 10).

It is precisely this sort of communion which is found in Trinitarian relationality and in the relationship between God and the Church and which is also found in the Eucharist. The particular of the eucharistic communion allows people to receive the divine nature. This allows people to “claim again our true identity in the communion of God around the loaf and the cup, for the Holy Communion is what it says it is, the Communion of the Holy, the Communion of God” (Carnley, 2001: 11). The signified divine nature is instantiated in the particular signs of the Eucharist in a moderate realist fashion.

Carnley’s eucharistic theology is based on the assumptions of moderate realism.

Peter Carnley

Born 1937

Former Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia and Archbishop of Perth